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Richard Beard

Richard Beard

Richard Beard is the author of four novels, including Damascus (Arcade, 1999), a New York Times Notable Book of the Year, and Dry Bones (Secker & Warburg, 2004). He has written three works of non-fiction, and is the Director of the National Academy of Writing in London.

All Richard Beard's books

Latest reviews

Who would deny that we are fascinated by the complaints of the privileged? Or titillated by the underside of fortune? In LAZARUS IS DEAD, the English novelist Richard Beard capitalizes on such verities. Beard's fictional biography of the Bible's second most famous resurrected...

— Dec 13 2012

In this alternative theological novel Jesus does more than weep...and Lazarus does more than die. Beard engages in much plausible speculation here, for example, that Jesus and Lazarus grew up as best friends and then drifted apart. Lazarus seized an opportunity to become...

— Dec 6 2012

I once saw an interview with novelist Salman Rushdie on C-Span where he discussed his interest in religion, despite the fact that he sees himself as an atheist. He said to the interviewer that “Atheists are often obsessed with religion...” and I think there is some truth...

— Nov 19 2012

Brimming with wit and humor, Lazarus Is Dead transcends genres as it recounts the story of a great friendship lost and re-found. In the gospels Jesus is described as having only one friend, and when this friend dies, Jesus does something that he does nowhere else...

— Nov 9 2012

Late last year I saw a review for Richard Beard’s Lazarus Is Dead (2011) on John Self’s blog ( here). John was surprised to find this book quickly become one of his favorites of the year. Knowing only what is recorded in the book of John, I was curious about a book...

— Oct 3 2012

Yep, that Lazarus. This is a fascinating novel, counting down until the famous revenant's demise and beyond, reconstructing a wryly humorous, quasi-historical (and not at all blasphemous, always a nice surprise in modern literary fiction!) account of Lazarus's life, death...

— Sep 29 2012

St. Peter: ‘Tell us what [resurrection] was like.’ Lazarus: ‘Let me speak with Jesus…Please, we have some catching up to do.” St. Peter: ‘Do you want to thank him?” Lazarus: ‘I don’t know. What counts as good behaviour after a resurrection?’...

— Sep 27 2012

In this startling and ingenious “biography” of Lazarus, told with a light, often humorous touch, Richard Beard defies the limits of biography by mixing known elements from the Gospel of John (and from historical research) with elements from his own imagination. Often...

— Sep 26 2012

Over the span of sixteen years, Thomas Mann penned what he thought of as his greatest work: a four part novel entitled Joseph and His Brothers which retells the biblical story of Joseph in Egypt. That few (if any) of us ever heard of these novels attests to the irrelevance...

— Sep 25 2012

Among all the tricks ascribed to Jesus, raising Lazarus from the dead (after four days, by which time he'd gotten kind of smelly -- "Lord, by this time he stinketh: for he hath been dead four days" (John 11:39)) is among the most impressive; nevertheless, it begs several questions.

— Sep 20 2012

In this alternative theological novel Jesus does more than weep..and Lazarus does more than die. Beard engages in much plausible speculation here, for example, that Jesus and Lazarus grew up as best friends and then drifted apart. Lazarus seized an opportunity to become...

Lazarus died. Jesus wept. Lazarus rose again. The Gospel of John elaborates a little, but Matthew, Mark and Luke remain silent. From these slender threads, Richard Beard’s first novel for seven years impressively spins an entire life story. Lazarus and Jesus are childhood...

Lazarus’s tomb is in Bethany, a town now associated with al-Eizariya a mile outside of Jerusalem on the Mount of Olives. If you take the tour, you walk past gift shops and a house that probably isn’t really “The Home of Lazarus, Martha and Mary”.